Leonardo DaVinci’s wing and glider designs have inspired literature, art, and cinema over the centuries. But plenty of other people have schemed to take to the air, long before the Wright Brothers. Here are just some of the inventors who devised methods of unpowered human flight...with mixed success.

Today marks the anniversary of Orville and Wilbur Wright's first successful flight near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. With Orville as pilot, they were the first to give man the heavier-than-air, self-powered wings that allowed them to soar 120 ft in 12 seconds and tear Icarus a new one in the process.

You can't fault a 1918 artist for thinking future spacemen would travel the stars at two miles/minute (120 mph). But to think that astronauts would travel open canopy, Wright Brothers style? Cah-rayzee talk.